Jeez! Start sharpening the pitchforks...

[altivo]

Tea Party Congressman complains that his $600,000 net income isn't enough and that it costs $200,000 "just to feed his family" each year.

No wonder people like this have no understanding and no sympathy at all for those who are unemployed or lack health insurance. I'm 61 years old, have two advanced degrees, and have worked full time in advanced technical and educational fields for 39 years now. Never once in all that time have I even made a gross annual income in the six figure range. Of course, I have some ethics that you tea party guys lack. I won't steal from people in order to get more for myself, for instance, the way bankers and politicians have been doing for years now.

So, Congressman John Fleming (R-LA,) don't expect me to break out my violin for you. That is, unless you expect me to break it over your head, which is clearly full of rocks so you won't feel it anyway, and run you through with the bow. It is vampires like you who have created this miserable economic situation. You'll get no sympathy from me, and if your constituents have even half a brain, you won't be re-elected either.

Listen up, folks. Voting for these people is not doing you any good and will do you even more harm in the long run. They do NOT care about you. All they care about is their own greed. Quit electing millionaires to office, will you? It's as if the chickens voted for Col. Sanders, it really is.

Comments

[avon_deer]

I wonder if there is a scientific formula that can be used to work out the exact snapping point of the wage earning classes. The point at which the reaction to this kind of thing DOES become violent. From my point of view, it's certainly been a long wait so far. So long in fact I have given up believing that people (in my country at least) are anything other than sheep, willing hopping to abattoir.

"Thank you sir; may I have another?"

[baphnedia]

While I'm not totally sure - the point of breakdown will be where the government is unable to function, where less expensive alternatives are no longer available. Like Fleming saying that Obama's plan to cut the deficit by 3 trillion dollars (this is talked about at the beginning of the MSNBC interview). Fleming says that the spending cuts proposed by Obama would 'hurt jobs' in a fragile economy. This, coming from the same party that was so pissed off that Obama didn't cut the budget by 6 trillion dollars earlier this year.

The point of the Tea party is to challenge the dominance of other political parties and take over. Their brand of nationalism and political opposition for the sake of opposing the leader is a quick path to civil war or dominance through fear and force. The wage earning classes themselves would find their members spread on both sides of the conflicts - as some very high wage-earners are highly respected among the rest of us for their gregariousness.

Anyway, I usually seem to soapbox over Altivo's journal, and I need to quit doing that. My thought is that the wage class war will mostly be fought along political party lines rather than monetary lines.

[altivo]

I'm afraid the breakdown will come when there's no longer enough cheap beer and some union goes on strike and sabotages the cable television networks.

I know this sounds cynical, but living in the US has made me that way. Start rattling cages and you'll get the response "I hate politics. I don't want to hear about it." Avon is right about the sheep. Unfortunately, they still vote, but the vote is based on single issues rather than the broad balances and risks that are becoming so urgent.

Wealth controls American politics because it can buy all the television time it wants and can afford the cleverest public relations techniques. Fox News is a superb example of this. Convince the voters that there's a conspiracy to steal from them, even while you have your hand right in their pocketbook. And it works, too well for all of us, because reality is much more complex than anything that can be summed up in ten words of no more than two syllables each. Meanwhile the most outrageous and emotion-inspiring lies can be told in as few as five words of one syllable each.

[schnee]

Makes you wonder if he at least knows how many houses he owns, doesn't it? :P

[hrrunka]

Makes you wonder how many clues he's short of. Is he totally clueless, utterly clueless, or totally and utterly clueless...

[schnee]

My money, even though it is apparently nowhere near enough to feed a family, is on "totally and utterly clueless". :)

[altivo]

I'm reminded of an incident that took place so very long ago that I have to apologize for not being able to date it. I think it was in the 1970s, though.

There was a serious recession at the time, and as usual, Congress was deadlocked over any attempt to relieve it. One group challenged another: Try to live for one week on only the amount of money available to a family of equal size that was receiving public aid.

I remember one senator complaining that his wife took up the challenge and fed him only frankfurters and canned beans for a week. At the time I was amazed that she didn't know how to be more resourceful than that. Now I realize that she was trying to send him a message too. BTW, he didn't really get it, in spite of her effort.

[altivo]

I very much doubt that he knows how many offspring he actually has, and I'm quite sure he doesn't know the cost of anything at the supermarket.

Actually, this brings up another element of the whole problem. Men are ignorant of real economics in our world. Oh, they push around abstract figures, but those are often so large that they become meaningless. Women know the realities of the economy because they see them every day as they try to balance microbudgets and find the best sources at the lowest costs. If we had more women in Congress, things would be very different.

In general, women have done well as diplomats and heads of state when they are granted the opportunity. Let's let women tackle these big budget issues. I suspect they can resolve them much more quickly and equitably than the current stuffed suits who occupy all those useless seats. Women are practical, men are full of hot air.

[schnee]

That's quite polemic, and I can't say I agree with it.

Just to explain my above comment, BTW, it was just a tongue-in-cheek reference to John McCain's inability to remember how many houses he actually owned during his presidential campaign in 2008: another instance of a filthy rich republican pretending to be one of the "little guys" and then making a comical gaffe. (In McCain's case, I think the number was ultimately something in the range of 8 to 12, BTW.)

[altivo]

Oh, I'm dead serious about the women. Somehow the only ones who get any media attention are the nut cases like Palin and Bachmann, but we have a lot of sensible women in politics here who take both longer views and more sensible ones. They are not afraid to suggest cuts in military spending, for instance. They also take a very practical view on wasteful spending anywhere, even in their own districts.

McCain was a much more exaggerated example. He's filthy rich. Fleming is just barely a millionaire in terms of his net worth. Both, however, are so far removed from the reality of the average American that they should be disqualified from government.

[baphnedia]

While I don't agree with your statement on women, I can offer up a random fact to help support it. Orcinus Orcas live in a matriarchal society, and if you were to ask 'well, what good does that do them?', they are the second most distributed mammal on the planet Earth, behind humans. Yay, for killer whales!